Artist-in-Residence - Meera Margaret Singh

June 8 – August 15, 2015

Meera Margaret Singh is a Toronto-based artist who questions cultural, physical, geographical, and emotional ideas of displacement and suspension. In both projects planned during her residency, Singh is exploring and questioning notions of the ‘simulated’ and the ‘real’ as performed through the body.

Singh challenged us to consider the history of figurative art – specifically representations of women in historic works – through two photographs of female body builders in domestic settings, which are presented among the AGO’s collection of paintings from the 1800s that show women in diverse roles.

Informed by her ongoing research in India, Singh also hosted a series of free participatory laughter yoga workshops as part of her residency. These events encourage visitors to laugh out loud in the museum, and to counter the idea that the museum is exclusively a place of contemplation and reverence. These workshops will provide the context for a new video work.

Meera Margaret Singh is a Winnipeg born, Toronto-based photographer. With a background in anthropology and art history, Meera first became interested in photography as a documentary tool. While pursuing her degrees in Fine Art, Meera began to explore the tension between documentary and fiction. She further seeks to represent fluidity (of culture, of gender, etc.), challenging the viewer to ask questions of her work. Through a succession of photographic series and more recently video works, Meera has questioned and interrogated cultural, physical, geographical, and emotional ideas of displacement and suspension. Singh has been selected as a scholarship winner and participant in the Magnum Workshop with international photographer Alessandra Sanguinetti and was a selected artist in an international residency with German photographer Thomas Struth at the Atlantic Centre for the Arts in Florida. Her work has been included in numerous exhibitions and festivals throughout Canada and the United States. She completed a residency in India this past spring in support of new work focused on laughing yogis.

Art Gallery of Ontario

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